A couple of years ago
I was teaching English in Brighton for EF (a shoddy con job to exploit rich kids from abroad) and at the beginning of each term there was a group photo with the classes. My class was all Scandinavian - not a dark face among them.

So I blacked up. Nobody asked me to, but I just thought it would look better. I was fired with immediate effect.
(frankspencer, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:37, 9 replies)

Meh.
Swedes ritually take the piss out of English Food: This doesn't phase me. They have Surstömming and lutfisk etc.. They clearly have no sense of Irony. ;o)

Anyway.. I join in the joke from time to time, and on a recent trip to Germany our host - a lovely middle-ages* German lass - said that she hoped that the food we'd be eating that night was going to be nice. I responded saying that "Well, it'll definitely be better than English food! =)"

I got a swift repremand from the german lady for stereotyping... =( I explained that I WAS english, and that I was only joking. She laughed, mentioned "Spotted Dick" and we were back on the same level.

ahhhh... that cheered me up.

As you were people.

Edit
*Typo ;o)
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:34, 5 replies)

PC Conspiracy Theory
If anyone wants proof that builders are secretly funding the whole 'politically correct' movement - consider recent building projects and all the extra cash spent on pointless 'features' that a supposedly there to cater for people blind or wheelchair bound people.

Take Hastings Railway Station - opened two years ago... above the ticket office is the traincrew depot for Drivers and Guards. A lift has been installed from the ground to 1st floor. All the light switches are 2ft off the floor and all the doors have signage in braille. How many blind, train drivers in wheelchairs can there be?

Maybe a little common sense needs to be used in certain circumstances!
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:31, 6 replies)

Again, PC can eat my ass. This is about ignorance.
My Dear Mun has scoliosis in a way that makes her an interesting medical case-book. Her X-rays are used by arguably britains Best spinal surgeon in lectures world-wide etc. Anyway, I'm not trying to dance to fame on someone elses back - as it were.



MY Mum, when walking has to suffer her ribcage crashing into her pelvis. Not only is this excruciatingly painful, but the noise sets teeth on edge. She is on enough Warferine to cause the average person to hemorrhage to death, and an hourly dose of painkillers that would render a child unconcious. When time gets bad she has an armoury of Morphine lollipops. She hates resorting to them as she thinks it makes her look weak.

With various complications like osteoperosis Sjögren's disease, chronic constipation and so on she's a walking wreck... but when it's time to play at shopping, - and my GOD does she play - she uses her wheelchair. Without it she's in agony after 2 minutes of walking. She tries for longer... but she simply can't do it.

People seem to gawp, but hey, that's cool, they also stand to one side and make way. It's like having your pwn personal cow-shifter..
The one thing that bugs me is when we pull up to a garden center (for example) and park in a handicapped spot. Mum gets out and hobbles to the rear of the car waiting for me to erect her wheelchair, and some utter ass-hat mutters - in a deliberately audible and snooty way - "If she can walk she doesn't need that chair"

Charles Darwin once said "Ignorance begets confidence more frequently than does knowledge"
I've used it many times, and will us it many more.

It makes my blood BOIL, but I usually manage to curb my retorts to lines like "And what would an arrogant ignoramous like you know about living with a disability that effects your entire life? - and before you answer - your chronic stupidity is not classed as a disability"

Anyway.... I'm not here to rant.. I'm not here to say "My mum's as tough as boots: worship her" I'm going to tell you about one of the things that made me giggle last time i was in the UK.

Mum and I had gone through the ritual of being starred at and listening to ingorant comments... she's got herself the Phostrogen and the squirty-bits that her watering system seems to devour weekly, and we'd deliberated for ages about some gadget or another... We got to the checkout, and the lass behind the counter wound up her voice and announced down to my mum "THAT WILL BE FOURTEEN NINTEY-SEVEN DEAR"

Mum, Cool as a cucumber and smiling her usual wry smile replied "I'm neither deaf nor retarded, I've just got a problem with my spine; there's no need to shout. Here's 15 quid, keep the change dear".

Length? She's 5'3" and getting shorter.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:21, 9 replies)

I did shoot
last year for a Asylum/Refugee group "Xmas party". I say Xmas , but as it was about that time, it was a non denomonitatinonal thing. Anyway, I did the usual thing of asking if anyone doesn't want a pic, please tell me, and I'll make sure i sure don't shoot you. All standard stuff. A group of Somalian women didn't want theirs taken - about 40 of them, and this was in a crowd of about 300 peeps. Fucking nightmare, what could I do? I compromised my ideals, and shot them anyway, but tried photoshopperying then out of it. Bloody impossible, so theyr'e on some website/brochure whatever. Fuck it. Sorry to upset religious peeps, but it'ds all a bunch of wank.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:14, 2 replies)

Mam and dad....
...walking down the road on the way to me mum's workplace, which is a local Primary School (she's a Teaching Assistant there). Halfway there, a school bus with loads of kids from there starts heading towards them, to which me mum says to dad "That's from me school, now don't do anything embarrasing"....

...to which my dad grabs her hand and starts walking like a monkey-mong man and waves at the bus full of kids while smiling like Joey Deacon. The 8-9 year old kids on the bus were all laughing and the teachers with them were all disgusted at the mong impersonation.

Cue many school kids for many weeks later walking upto my mum pretending to walk like me dad, unknown that they were looking like a comedy mong impression.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 9:01, Reply)

Paki Murdering Festival
In the Cornish village where I live, we've held an annual 'Paki Murdering Festival' for the last 400 years without anyone getting upset about it.

Then, last year the do-gooding, interfering busybodies at the Commission for Racial Equality decided that this was apparently no longer 'politically correct' because, and I quote, "murder is a criminal offence".

They called in the police and had our community concentration camp closed down.

This is just political correctness gone mad! What next, stopping us marrying our siblings?
( the RAND corporation a.k.a. Kevin Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:57, 1 reply)

I couldn't help myself
The European Commission don't find Political Correctness too hard..
"EC PC" they say.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:51, 1 reply)

...and Political INcorrectness!
Having said all that I said in my post below, I discovered the other day that our new computer system, in the section where you can specify a patient's religion, offers the option "Moonie".

Mainly due to a colleague asking me what a Moonie was, I looked it up and found this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonies

Basically, Moonie is or can be an offensive term; to some people it's as offensive as nigger!

I've let my manager know, we're going to get it changed apparently =)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:35, Reply)

Buuhhhrrr....
I did an ecommerce site for a company that sells welding gear. Someone pointed out that the site wasn't optimised for the blind.

Seriously, how many blind welders do you know?
( Biggus Dickus , it was like that when I found it, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:32, 1 reply)

oh! and
A lady was asking for some donations to a cancer charity in the city a few years ago. As I looked around in my wallet from some change, she asked sympathetically, "Are things difficult at home at the moment?"
What the hell? Was she some sort of crappy psychic therapist?
I stared, confused.
"Back... home?"
"Yes. In China. It must be hard right now, with the SARS virus and everything."
Bless her heart.
"Oh, no, I live here," I said.
"Then your poor relatives..."
"I'm from Korea."
She stared at me like a deer in the headlights. She'd reached a dead end.
"Have a good day!" I said, and skipped off.
(TheChicken Five hundred thousand points from Gryffindor, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:31, 2 replies)

Who says what now?
I work for the NHS, which is a veritable hotbed of political correctness.

A couple of things I can think of straight away:

We're not allowed to use the term "brainstorming" any more, because apparently brainstorms are what epileptics have. So now we have blue sky thinking.

Also, our "wonderful" new computer system has (as you've probably read in the news) a few problems and bugs. Occasionally something stops working and we have to tell staff a new (invariably longer) way of doing things.

This used to be called a "workaround".

However, apparently this creates the impression that there's a problem which we're trying to work around (funny that, since this is actually what's happened).

Anyway, we're not allowed to call them workarounds anymore - they're alternate process identifiers.

O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:31, 3 replies)

THE WORLD'S GONE MAD
Acting, as I sometimes do in my middle management role , as head of HR I had to speak to Job Centre Plus to arrange a posting of an employment opportunity on their database.
I carefully wrote a job description along the lines of " energetic,hard working person (NOT man - that would've been sexist)required to tote that barge, lift that bale etc in a hellhole warehouse in central London"
The, what seemed like, fifteen year old "adviser" at the Job centre demured, stating that "you can't put "hard working" as that would discriminate against "people who didn't have the same work ethic as others".
I.Kid.You.Not.
I wouldn't mind but the "candidates" that they put forward for the position would have disgraced Maccy D.
( porky, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:30, 1 reply)

I'm Australian and adopted from Korea
This calls for much lolz. I love watching people get all awkward when I tell them I'm adopted, or panic when they think they've said something racist towards Asians.

The other day at work, I served a couple who were speaking Chinese. As they walked away, talking rapidfire in a language that I find terribly difficult to understand, my coworker pondered, "I wonder what they're saying?"
"I don't know," I replied, wishing I could understand Chinese.
He did a double take. His eyes darted around in panic as he stuttered, "Oh, no, i mean, I wasn't asking you...cuz... cuz you're Asian.. and they were speaking in an Asian language.. like, I know you're Australian, and... and... yeah... I didn't mean anything cuz you're Asian, and, and, yeah."
I stared at him for a good ten seconds. He was visibly sweating.
"It's okay, dude," I said, and served the next customer.
(TheChicken Five hundred thousand points from Gryffindor, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:24, Reply)

liberal child forced into 'racism'
I think agree with the general idea of political correctness, but...

when I was a baby fawn and in a London comprehensive primary school where 85% of the kids were black or of various other refugee ethnicity (Somali, Kosovan, etc), I was horrendously bullied for the majority of my time there.

I was fat, a swot, and had a bowl cut so it was to be expected really, but I did get a lot of abuse from the Arabic kids about being Jewish (the only Jew in the school). It got worse and worse, and when I told the teachers they helpfully did nothing. So, when I was due to leave a year earlier than everyone else to go to a very prestigious public boarding school I was inordinately relieved and vowed to continue holding in my anger until I left.

But one day the taunts and weird Palestinian abuse got too much finally and I burst.

"IT'S BECAUSE MY PARENTS ARE RICH AND JEWISH THAT I GET TO LEAVE THIS SHITHOLE. ", i shouted. "YOUR STUPID REFUGEE PARENTS CAN ONLY AFFORD THE GHETTO COMPREHENSIVE SO ONE DAY YOU CAN ALL LOOK FORWARD TO SERVING ME CHIPS".

Those were the actual words I said too. I can remember this as it was the only time I ever stuck up for myself in primary school.
The result? I nearly got suspended for racism, and would have ended my comprehensive education with an expulsion.

Luckily Daddy Fawn stepped in and used his Jew claw to make sure I wasn't expelled and I spent the rest of the term hiding from arab children.

Ironically, I went to the West Bank in Palestine for part of my gap year to help an aid organization.



(sorry for the length, it's my first time and I can feel the blood trickling down my legs)
(little fawn, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 8:19, Reply)

Apologies for the oppression of women everywhere
(and length)

Back in the distant mists of time I was a fairly precocious young piglet with a penchant for reading. My tastes were eclectic but I always firmly returned to the ‘adventure Stories For Boys’ type annuals that were available back then (yeah yeah, I’m old - sue me). Our English teacher (she taught English, I don’t know her nationality) invited us to present to the class a review of a favourite book.

Fantastic. A chance to show my superior reading level and talk about something I genuinely loved. But which book to choose? Really there was no choice – I was addicted to a series of books by an author named Willard Price where two young lads went tearing around the globe having adventures with animals (steady there). These were called, “African Adventure”, “South Seas Adventure” etc etc.

I can’t remember which one I chose but I do remember the front cover; a garish rendering of one of the protagonists hanging from a cliff over a pride of slathering lions.

I write the review. I re-write. I sweat. I actually care about some schoolwork.

The session begins. I stand. I talk. I tell of the wonders held between those thin, pasteboard covers. And then I finish, as the teacher requested, by recommending the book to someone.

Now I may have had the reading level of a twelve year old at age eight but I was also a bit, well, thick. I tended to believe everything I read regardless of its source. On the back of this book it proudly stated “Adventure Stories FOR BOYS”.

You can see where this is going.

I repeat the recommendation, finish the review and stand awaiting the adulation from the teacher. Who stands silently. And then proceeds to tear strips off me for being “sexist”. “Why can’t girls read this book?” this harridan shrieked, “aren’t girls as good as you?” She made every girl in the class stand up so that I could explain to each one individually why she shouldn’t be allowed to read my book. No one else got to do a review as she went on and on and on about equality (understand that at this age we didn’t really get that there was a difference between the sexes)!

What I wanted to say was, “but you asked for my opinion, it’s only an opinion – aren’t I allowed to have a different opinion to you?”

What I did was cry and wet myself.

Which is why I am now an irascible old misogynist who takes great delight in cutting in front of women on my huge motorbike and leering at them while touching myself.

Tremendous.

Length? About 14 feet and covered in chrome.

Edit: That's right Hal and Roger Hunt. Used to trap animals for their Dad. Still remember those books fondly.
(Pig_of_Doom, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 7:39, 5 replies)

Dehli sister callcentres :(
I work in an Internet Support Department for a certain well known UK variety (no name, but they've never done it). Early last year they opened a sister department in Dehli, which was meant to take the brunt of customer calls and we take the overflow of any tricky jobs with which they couldn't resolve. Which turns out to be about 90% of the jobs. I kid you not, they are fecking useless as far as most things are concerned. Most of our customers are leaving us, as if they have any problem at all they have to speak to about 4/5 Dehli guys before speaking to us and actually getting it fixed within 15 minutes, and then our department are getting a bollocking for not dealing with it within the 10 minute average handling time, which Dehli are acing (would you stay on the phone for over 10 minutes to someone in Dehli on a Premium Rate line being told your computer is broken when you've tried 6 computers, 2 routers and reinstalled your OS and you still can't browse? Didn't think so). Literally, I'm getting fucked off with it, as are all of our department now in the UK.

But if the customer says that he's unhappy with the service he's received from Dehli then that's racist. I've spoken to customers who raised a complaint after they spent hours calling premium lines to Dehli being told they need to buy a new computer and when one of us in the UK fixed it quickly he made a complaint to our management, who told him not to be racist towards them (even though they cost him an extra £30 in phone bills trying to get it sorted out).

So if you ever consider getting Broadband with anyone, be vary wary of a certain "son of a brand"'s service; the connection itself is mainly ok but the monkeys in the offices are only there to make the statistics look sweeter, regardless of if they can do the job or not. I swear to god Ofcom would clean up at times.

PS Dehli are smelly cunts.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 7:08, 3 replies)

b3tans
The most amusing cases of Political Correctness Gone Mad comes from reading some of the holier than thou replies posted by some b3tans in this very QOTW.

Said b3tans seem to have no problem being members of a website notorious for being very un-PC.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 6:34, 3 replies)

Dad's co-worker...
My dad, whom I have mentioned once or twice before, worked for the NYC Dept. of Sanitation. He had a co-woker in his "section/ district" named Seymor Miles. Now Mr. Miles is black. Made it known he is black. Mr. Miles was an alcoholic, a drug addict (not pot, but coke, and dad suspects, crack and also heroin). Everytime Mr. Miles didnt do his job, or screwed up (which was weekly), his first response: "i'll sue you, the dept., and the city, cause you're doing it because I'm black".

This routine went on for several years. Until one day, Mr. Miles gets sacked. Why? Not cause he was black. Oh No. But because he was so stupid in filling out the renewal for his drivers license, that he reversed the order of his names. So his DL read Mr. Miles Seymor, not Mr. Seymor Miles. In effect he had a fake ID, and that no matter what color you are - is grounds for dismissal.

So despite some idiots out there playing the race card - it does backfire on occassion when people are stupid.
(Subway Riding the rails underground, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 6:16, Reply)

National Pride
Aparently I wasn't allowed to have a mini Irish flag on my desk when working in a large government building. Because people might be offended... but it was perfectly acceptable for the South Africans, Kiwis and Aussies all to have flags, rugby balls.etc sitting on their monitors.

Something to do with the last 700 years of anglo-irish unpleasantness - and the fact that the IRA spent the last 30 years trying to blow up the very building we worked in. Management didn't appreciate me putting up my 'Guy Fawkes was right!' poster either....
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 6:13, 2 replies)

"Make a Hole"
In the US military, for years and years, whenever there was a large gaggle of Marines, or Soldiers or Sailors and you needed to get through that gaggle to the other side, particularly if you outranked the members of said gaggle, you would simply shout "MAKE A HOLE!"

And the gaggle would part like the proverbial Red Sea.

My last year as a Marine, I got a "memo" that said (God, I wish I still had that memo) "Henceforth all Marines will stop using the phrase "Make a Hole" because it illustrates an insensitivity to female Marines. It makes reference to their genitalia and it will not be tolerated by this command or any other within the United States Marine Corps. That is all."

Insensitivity? I NEVER in my entire time using that phrase, from military college to my time as a Marine thought about female genitalia when I was using that phrase. But ONE WM (WM = Woman Marine, and THAT term female Marines HATE) takes it the wrong way and the toughest, nastiest, meanest, grumpiest, fightenest military unit in North America has to have a 'sensitivity memo' sent out.

Political Correctness Gone Mad, Indeed.

Semper Fi!

Citadel
( Citadel Because the world needs less morons, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 4:28, 3 replies)

Interviews
Here in California if you are interviewing potential employees for a job, you're not allowed to ask their age, marital status, physical capabilities or anything else that might be construed as offensive.

Me, being English, a bit obnoxious and partially crippled find this highly amusing.
I will usually disclose my full age by the time I'm halfway through, then towards the end mention something about my husband. I also always tell them I'm partially crippled, and ask if the job would require anything that may be beyond my limitations.

Interviewers don't know what to do, I always get offered the jobs - every single fucking one - and take the one I want :)

Where I work, we have a chinese guy, 2 Mexicans, me and a sprinkling of white Americans.
Without fail, I get called "English" or "crip" at least twice a day, the Mexicans are called "beaners" and the chinese guy (the head honcho) is always called a chink. All to our faces. I love my job.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 3:57, 2 replies)

kids books
i work for a book publishing company that fires books out to schools in the US. heres a bit of censorship we have to deal with :

: pictures of cows can't have udders showing
: photos of bulls must have testicles erased
: nipples to be erased from shirtless Egyptians
: definitely no dongs
: must be correct ratio of black/white/yellow/disabled/enabled people

the funny thing was in a book we done about American Indians (native americans) there was a question: "Do you know any other meanings of the word 'camp'?"

ah, yeah...
(randomstupid, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 3:32, Reply)

An important point...
The people who put your shopping in a bag at the supermarket checkout are called customer support officers or something similarly ridiculous.

This is something I discovered after the beautiful Indian lady loading up my bags overheard me say the following on my mobile:

"I'll be there in a minute, I'm just waiting for this packky girl to finish up..."

When making up your own job titles for people, do take care to think through all the alternative meanings.
( DickieDoesDallas eshews witty slogans, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 3:18, Reply)

BTW
My favorite swear term is:

"You black-enameled bastard"

And I've no idea where I picked it up from. It just sounds good.
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 2:44, 4 replies)

sheep?
i went to pick my niece up from nursery last week and arrived a bit early. just in time, as it happened, to hear them singing a little song.
what was this song, you ask?
baa baa white sheep.
i kid you not. baa baa fucking WHITE sheep. i asked the teacher what the hell they thought they were playing at, only to be told that baa baa black sheep would be racist.
so, calling it a white sheep isn't racist, then?
idiots.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 2:28, 1 reply)

Please listen to this.
youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE

That is all.
( thiswasmyclone, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 2:22, 4 replies)

For The Older Brits
Today the Government announced that Windscale will now be known by the fluffier term, Sellafield, and radiation will henceforth be called "magic moonbeams".

With apologies to Not The Nine O'Clock News

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 2:05, Reply)

They Don't Take Any PC Bullshit Here In Oz..



Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 1:43, 3 replies)

Pollitically Correctness
The bane of my working life. This will be a long one as I'm going to fit in several instances at once. First, Don.

I've mentioned him before - my PFY at a large insurance company. Young, black and a thoroughly nice chap - even if he couldn't handle his drink. (Look up Don the Pigsticker story.)

So this one day, we're in the canteen when my pager went off. A server had gone tits-up in another site across town. No biggy as we running clusters but needed a kick.

"Don - can you go across town and reboot LD02" I said.

"Why me? Is it 'cos I is black?" says Don, hamming up a black accent.

"Yes it's 'cos you is black - now move your arse" and off he toddled.


20 minutes later security arrives at my desk and asks me to clear my desk. Someone had overheard our exchange downstairs and had reported me to the HR Harpies and they'd let loose the attack dogs.

So, as I'm packing my stuff, Don arrives and asks what’s going on.

"Been sacked mate. For calling you black. Racist apparently"

Don went mental.

"Don't move. Don't you fucking move until I get back" and he went haring off into HR. Once there he went apeshit with HR insisting that he was the one who would decide if someone had been racist towards him not some busybody in the fucking canteen. Result, an apology from HR and forget about firing me.

Episode 2 was the time I was dragged in front of HR for saying that someone, an admin girl, had the technical ability of a biscuit. She did. She couldn't even use e-mail but wanted a job with my team as a sys-admin. As she was an admin assistant, she thought that she had the skills. Me saying she had the technical ability of a biscuit was, apparently, racist.

Episode 3 was my fault. I was drunk. After a long evening drinking in the company bar on the top floor of the building, I defaced all the posters I could find. They used to say:

ARE YOU BEING SEXUALLY HARRASSED AT WORK. IF SO, CALL xxxxxxxxxx

They now read:

ARE YOU BEING SEXUALLY HARRASED AT WORK, IF NOT, WHY NOT - YOU UGLY?

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 1:40, 1 reply)